The invention relates generally to the treatment of radioactive solutions and, more particularly to a method for incorporating radioactive phosphoric acid solutions in concrete.
Operations with nuclear facilities may generate radioactive phosphoric acid solutions. For example, the primary cooling system in the N-reactor at Hanford, Wash. is decontaminated by circulating 6% phosphoric acid through the coolant piping. In a typical year 500,000 gallons of phosphoric acid are produced. It has been proposed to neutralize this waste with NaOH and incorporate it into concrete. This approach suffers the disadvantage of forming a soluble Na.sub.2 HPO.sub.4 species and only achieving a waste loading of from 5% to 15%.
It is accordingly a general object of the invention to provide a method for incorporating a radioactive phosphoric acid waste into concrete in which the phosphoric acid is first converted into an insoluble compound.
Another object of the invention is to provide a method for incorporating radioactive phosphoric acid waste into concrete in a manner achieving a high waste loading.
Other objects, advantages and novel features of the invention will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art upon examination of the following detailed description of a preferred embodiment of the invention and the accompanying drawing.